Canadians are worn out by two years of lock-downs, masks and social distancing. Being kept in a de facto state of emergency for so long has taken its toll.
A recent Angus Reid poll found that the "picture of mental health in Canada is one of exhaustion and increasing trauma."
A staggering 38% of Canadians report "struggling with mental health"; 23% say they are depressed and 37% are suffering from anxiety.
Lockdowns and closures have created huge economic hardship as well. A separate Angus Reid poll found that 57% of Canadians "say that it is currently difficult to feed their household."
Concerns that their people are worn down and stressed out has led South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands to cancel all COVID restrictions. The United Kingdom will end all of their COVID protocols on Thursday. Even Israel has cancelled its vaccine passport. My Ecuadorian wife tells me Ecuador has also ended all their COVID restrictions.
Several of the above countries are no further along in the Omicron wave than Canada is. They’ve all decided that the mental health benefits of a return to normal outweigh the cost of a temporary uptick in Omicron cases and hospitalizations. Once it is clear that hospitals will not be overwhelmed, there is no advantage to delaying the inevitable. Those countries understand their people need normality above all else.
Here in Canada, Justin Trudeau has put the entire country under martial law.
He's accused a Jewish Member of Parliament of being a Nazi sympathizer.
He's sent mounted police charging into crowds of peaceful protesters.
He's frozen the bank accounts of people who broke no laws.
This is the same Justin Trudeau who three years ago was lecturing the Indian Government that they should enter into a dialogue with farmers protesting in that country and negotiate in good faith.
Justin clearly doesn't want the pandemic to end. He will drag this out as long as he can, not because of any public health concern but simply because he knows that when the pandemic is over, Canadians will start to ask questions. Too many questions.
Two years is too long to live in isolation and fear. Normal is what Canadians need right now. The only real emergency here is to Justin Trudeau’s political future.
PS: Justin has entered into dangerous territory. Naomi Wolf forewarns us of what could come next. What a bizarre world it is when Canadians have to tune in to Fox News to find out what is happening in Canada. Out of a sense of fairness, I will leave the last word to Justin himself.
This should be widely shared. It drips of the insincerity and hypocrisy, the phoney posturing with which he will always be identified. He chose what legacy he will leave. I never thought he would stoop so low, but power does horrific things to people.
https://youtu.be/M6H-dB686jA
At the risk of splitting hairs...it's the provinces that have induced states of emergencies in perpetuity. The Emergencies Act was only in place to circumvent democracy and the legal system to rid Ottawa of advocates for civil liberties. In BC, it's the government led by John Horgan and the public health office that need to revoke the state of emergency.
Which is just to say that political stripe doesn't matter, and although it's tempting to put this all on JT, every province and every premier bears as much of the moral blame as JT.